What graphics card is best for me? How to upgrade for X3?

The_Abyss · Post by **The_Abyss** » Thu, 20. Oct 05, 10:29

Right, it did take longer than I thought, but I have now lost patience like some of the other forum members with the constant new graphics card threads.

So, want to know your 9800 Pro from a 6800 LE? Think you can justify a FX5700 over a 9600? Care to marvel over the heavyweight contest between the 7800 and the X1800? Or do you simply want to correct everyone else because after all nobody knows more about graphics cards than you do and you feel the need to impart your knowledge upon the forum?

Compare AGP cards at Tomshardware

Compare PCI-e cards at Tomshardware

Check out the Tomshardware Interactive CPU chart

Well, this is the place to post it.

Don't know your 512mb RAM from your Pentium 4 560? Wondering why dual core doesn't really seem to make gaming any faster? Yes, you got it, post it here.

The thread will also act as a magnet for other new graphics card posts, which will from now be all moved to here.

muppetts · Post by **muppetts** » Thu, 20. Oct 05, 10:33

Seeing as soo many people are after tips on their Graphics cards I thought the proper link was needed to help out the Mods who are going nuts!

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/ ... eries.html

and they have a forum too

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/forumd ... 130a7b&f=3

Additional: www.futuremark.com - Free 3DMark Benchtest software
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=163 - Rivatuner - A free tool to help OverClock your GC among other functions

Chips · Post by **Chips** » Thu, 20. Oct 05, 10:40

Search for your video cards, see their stats, their reviews, their performance and more. Search for several cards to compare, and then compare the list for compatible cards for X3 with how those perform too.

Use google, type in the name of your card and then +review - the results that come up are "tech" sites usually, and offer indepth reviews of performance and stats.

DannySF · Post by **DannySF** » Thu, 20. Oct 05, 12:19

What was I saying again?

My PC has a piddling 512MB and I really feel the need to upgrade to 1GB for X3 (and a couple of other games, but they're not relevant).

Having spent a day turning the house upside down trying to find the original spec sheet for my PC and failing miserably, I'm in need of help.

What do I need to know about my PC and what's the best way to upgrade the memory?

grays · Post by **grays** » Thu, 20. Oct 05, 12:33

To find out about your PC Specs download this prog and it will tell you most of what you need.

http://www.lavalys.com/products.php?lang=en

muppetts · Post by **muppetts** » Thu, 20. Oct 05, 13:26

grays wrote:To find out about your PC Specs download this prog and it will tell you most of what you need.

http://www.lavalys.com/products.php?lang=en

wow great tool thanks!

Warchild · Post by **Warchild** » Thu, 20. Oct 05, 15:21

THAT is an excellent tool.

Looking at the stats from the summery....I see that my PC falls into the Midrange towards the bottom...time to definately upgrade the PC

Of course...thanks to this nice piece to programming...I now know the exact name of my mother board

Its an MSI KT3 -333- Ultra-2 R.A.I.D supported

Really nice piece of software...I like it

Cheers

Apollo911 · Post by **Apollo911** » Thu, 20. Oct 05, 15:27

Using the tomshardware comparison, I can see that an ahtlon 64 3800+ is quite a bit faster than a pentium 3.4ghz, is it worht the price inc...WHOAH!

Just did froogle for prices on both, you can get a dual core 3800+ for cheaper than a p4 650???
Ah, one is lost now, was just gonna buy a dell, but they only offer intel, but with these prices, I might just build it myself unles, does anyone know of a site with prices similar to dells, but have a wider range of hardware?

simonnance · Post by **simonnance** » Thu, 20. Oct 05, 15:57

Warchild wrote:THAT is an excellent tool.

Looking at the stats from the summery....I see that my PC falls into the Midrange towards the bottom...time to definately upgrade the PC

Of course...thanks to this nice piece to programming...I now know the exact name of my mother board
Its an MSI KT3 -333- Ultra-2 R.A.I.D supported

Really nice piece of software...I like it

Cheers

yah, it tells you a lot of stuf doesnt it! how do you tell what "range" your PC is in?

simonnance · Post by **simonnance** » Thu, 20. Oct 05, 16:19

Warchild wrote:THAT is an excellent tool.

Looking at the stats from the summery....I see that my PC falls into the Midrange towards the bottom...time to definately upgrade the PC

Of course...thanks to this nice piece to programming...I now know the exact name of my mother board
Its an MSI KT3 -333- Ultra-2 R.A.I.D supported

Really nice piece of software...I like it

Cheers

yah, it tells you a lot of stuf doesnt it! how do you tell what "range" your PC is in?

Jericho · Post by **Jericho** » Thu, 20. Oct 05, 16:28

WooHoo, my card is officialy "Great". 6800Ultra.

OK so I wish I had a pair SLI.

muppetts · Post by **muppetts** » Thu, 20. Oct 05, 18:03

Regarding below, does this mean my MB can take PCI or AGP cards?

Since I have taken one withering attack too many about my aged 5700 (recently called a hunk of *rap among others!) I decided to run a benchmark to see how it got on. The results were fairly nasty. SO I have looked around and found that they 6800GT is the card for me and Overclockers do good deals. At the moment I seem unable to register on the OC forum so wanted to ask the nice X techs a few questions.

I presume I need to know

a. What my MB (below) can take?
b. What power needs I must have?

Now I am a novice at the PC game so stay with me!

I see alot of people talking about power needs for the different cards, is this the main power to the base unit?

I have decided to take the step of trying to do this myself as the guy at the overpriced computer store says he will do it for 100Euros as it will take him 2 hours. He won't give me any details on what needs to be done to my system, I presume in the hope I don't go and do it myself!

Now the problem is (as you can see from above) I don't have a clue were to start other than having read a ton of reviews and choosing the 6800GT as the next card. I have found lots of new tools and have lots of information now at hand but no idea what to do with it.

Any help for this PC moron is very appreciated, I learn abit every day about PC's but it just never seems enough to do what I want and not break the thing!

Any h

Motherboard Info
Supported Slot Types ISA, PCI, AGP
Manufacturer MICRO-STAR INTERNATIONAL CO., LTD
Model MS-7010
BIOS Vendor Phoenix Technologies, LTD
BIOS Version 6.00 PG
BIOS Release Date 04/22/2004
BIOS Properties Plug and Play, Flash, AGP
AGP
Revision 3.5
Rate 4x, 8x (8x enabled)
Available Rate 0x0000000c
Selected Rate 0x00000008
Aperture Size 0 B
Sideband Addressing supported (enabled)
Fast Write not supported

Post by **CBJ** » Thu, 20. Oct 05, 18:10

Your motherboard will accept AGP graphics cards. You can check your power requirements here but remember that cheap power supplies are sometimes only reliable up to about 50% of their stated power rating.

Post by **Cycrow** » Thu, 20. Oct 05, 18:24

new graphics cards usually required abit more power for them to run properly, a decent 400w psu should usually be plenty

i poersonally wouldn't trust a cheap 300-350w PSU with a decent computer and its always a good idea to get a good quality

Unfortuatly its not always as easy as looking at the output for the PSU, a good quality 350W PSU can be more powerful than a cheap 400W one doesn't mean you have to spend loads on a decent PSU, you can get some pretty decent ones for about £50 and generally once you have a decent PSU they dont usually need to be upgraded for awhile.
I also wouldn't go for a q-tec supply, as they can be quite unstable and cause problems, and thier quote wattage is thier peak output rather than thier sustained output.

The Best value graphics cars are probably the 7800GT's which you can pick up for about £230, unfortuatly, these are only available as PCI-Express, so if you have AGP then u'll have to look at the 6800 series of cards, the 6800GT's and 6800ultras are also very powerful cards but can cost you a fair bit.
If you lucky the 6800LE's are very good value cards coming in at around £80, which is possible to unlock extra pipelines and shaders to improve its performance althou the chance that for that to work is really down to luck as some of them will and others wont
I dont really know much about ATI cards, so cant really say about thier equvilants

Warchild · Post by **Warchild** » Thu, 20. Oct 05, 18:44

simonnance wrote:
yah, it tells you a lot of stuf doesnt it! how do you tell what "range" your PC is in?

Ok...when you do a complete summery of the entire PC, there will be a REALLY long list. Look at the BOLD type. That is what your PC is rated at. Now...compare it to the rest of the list, and you'll see where you fall in the ratings and speeds.
As far as I can tell, it lists them in chronological order from best ( at the top) to Worst ( at the bottom ) .

My PC clearly falls to the bottom of the Midranged list now....and it is a few years old. Definately time to upgrade.
But...looking at the video cards section of the summery...I'm pretty closeto the top with the Nvidia

Mastery · Post by **Mastery** » Thu, 20. Oct 05, 18:45

in X2 it said the min ram was 128, i can play this fine and on X3 specs it says the min ram is 128 so can i play this because my computer says the Ram is only 64 and i want to be sure or did i just get lucky with X2

Warchild · Post by **Warchild** » Thu, 20. Oct 05, 19:19

Mastery wrote:in X2 it said the min ram was 128, i can play this fine and on X3 specs it says the min ram is 128 so can i play this because my computer says the Ram is only 64 and i want to be sure or did i just get lucky with X2

You're one of the lucky ones.
Most people that fall on the "minimum" mark have a few problems with speed and the like.
Usually its the graphics cards that aren't strong enough to actually play the game without stuttering or poor frame rates.
There ARE several posts about that subject.
The recommended requirements or sugested requirements should be what you should be using.
When you use the minimum specs, there is going to be a trade off...unless you turn off most of the effects and eye-candy that eceryone of us likes to see.
As far as I knew the systems requirements were ....
2.2Ghz CPU
512MB Ram
DVD ROM

Now...below this would be the minimum requirements...
A MUST is the DVDROM...you NEED this in order to actually play the game as it WILL NOT work on a PC CDROM.

i think the minimum requirements are
1.5Ghz CPU
256MB RAM
DVD ROM

But don't quote me as I might be off a little.
i never knew that X² would run on 64 MB ram

Sure...128MB Ram might be the minimum for X²...but not X³...its got ALOT more in it than X² does.
Like I said, I might be wrong...but I don't think I'm off by very much if I am.

Cheers

muppetts · Post by **muppetts** » Thu, 20. Oct 05, 20:01

CBJ wrote:Your motherboard will accept AGP graphics cards. You can check your power requirements here but remember that cheap power supplies are sometimes only reliable up to about 50% of their stated power rating.

Great Link! I now know I need 350 Watts

Now I have to find out what the power unit in my machine is! Problem is at the moment the side panls are putting up a real fight as they have never been moved before (yes screws out!). Id there a way I can tell with out going inside just yet?

+ I know I will probably sound an idiot but can a MB have both PCI Express & AGP or would that be total b..lucks

simonnance · Post by **simonnance** » Thu, 20. Oct 05, 20:12

oh i love my psu, guaranteed 350W, max peak is 450W, and i only need 300 odd! Its also realy efficient, and quiet as hell!

Lott 64 · Post by **Lott 64** » Thu, 20. Oct 05, 23:37

I know this should be in the Tech forum but everyone seems to be here. My problem is I just brougt a new GForce 6600gt card, it calls for a power supply of 300W but my HP computer has a power supply of 250W. My question is has anyone had success in swopping power supplys with a HP about two years old. I only brougt the card to play this game so I'm pissed about the whole situation. :x

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

What graphics card is best for me? How to upgrade for X3?

What graphics card is best for me? How to upgrade for X3?

Need to upgrade my memory...

128MB Ram

Re: 128MB Ram

Power supply